Michael Jarrell

Eco II B

[...] Michael Jarrell also skilfully uses the glittering timbres and harmonic entanglements in Eco II b (a variant of Eco II for voice and ensemble, itself derived from Eco for voice and piano. It eloquently renders the mystical elans of a sonnet by the 16th-century Spanish poet and ecclesiastic Luis de Gongora. The music translates the poem's erratic, desolate spirit and, with its slowed tempo, preserves the secret of this wandering. The beauty of the instrumental correspondences provides Françoise Kubler's voice with an ideal, sensual transparency that evolves, from the second to third strophes, towards a strange, brief spoken and scanned moment. Here, as in the previous piece, the initial equilibrium is re-established in the work's conclusion.Antoine Gindt,Extract from CD booklet Eco (Accord)